Songs are the statement of a people. You can learn a lot more about people
by listening to their songs than any other way, for into the songs go all the
hopes and hurts, the angers and fears, the wants and aspirations.

                                                                                                 John Steinbeck

Northern and Southern History

Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction. New York, 1992
James C. Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the
Roots of Southern Identity. New York, 1992.
Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice
Cultures since 1880. Urbana, 1985.
Standing at the Crossroads: Southern Life in the Twentieth Century. New York, 1986.
The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969. Urbana, 1990.
St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Clayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in
a Northern City. Chicago, 1993.
James Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great
Migration. Chicago, 1991.
Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960. New York, 1983.
Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the
Family, from Slavery to the Present. New York, 1985.
Lawrence A. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American
Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York, 1977.
Nicholas Lehman, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America. New York, 1991.
Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York, 1998.
Neil R. McMillan, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow.
Urbana, 1990.
John W. Roberts, From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and
Freedom. Philadelphia, 1989.
Clyde Woods, Arrested Development: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta. New York, 1998.

Variety of Blues Traditions

Sheldon Harris, Blues Who's Who: A Biographical Dictionary of Blues
Singers. New York, 1991.
Gerhard Herzhaft, Encyclopedia of the Blues. Fayetteville, 1992.
Clarence Major, Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African American Slang. New York, 1994.
Eric Sackheim, The Blues Line: A Collection of Blues Lyrics from Leadbelly
to Muddy Waters. Hopewell, NJ, 1993.
Robert Santelli, The Big Blues Book: A Biographical Encyclopedia. New York, 1993.

Musical History

William Barlow, Looking Up at Down: The Emergence of Blues Culture.
Philadelphia, 1989.
Bruce Bastin, Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast. Urbana,IL, 1995.
Stephen Calt, I'd Rather Be the Devil: Skip James and the Blues. New York,1994.
Stephen Calt and Gayle Wardlow, King of the Delta Blues: The Life and
Music of Charlie Patton. Newton, NJ, 1988.
Samuel Charters, The Blues Makers. New York, 1991.
Bruce Cook, Listen to the Blues. New York, 1995.
Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. New York, 1998.
Francis Davis, The History of the Blues. New York, 1995.
David Honeyboy Edwards, The World Don't Owe Me Nothing. Chicago, 1997.
David Evans, Big Road Blues: Tradition and Creativity in the Folk Blues.New York, 1982.
William Ferris, Blues from the Delta. New York, 1984.
Julio Finn, The Bluesman: The Musical Heritage of Black Men and Women in the Americas. New York, 1992.
Samuel A. Floyd, The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States. New York, 1995.
Peter Guralnik, Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock and Roll.New York, 1989.
Michael Haralambos, Soul Music: The Birth of a Sound in Black America. New York, 1974.
Michael W. Harris, The Rise of the Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas
Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church. New York, 1992.
Daphne Duval Harrison, Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s. New Brunswick, 1988.
Katrina Hazzard-Gordon, Jookin: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture. Philadelphia, 1990.
Joseph E. Holloway, Africanisms in American Culure. Bloomington, 1990.
Leroy Jones, Blues People: The Negro Experience in White America and the Music that Developed from It.
Charles Keil, Urban Blues. Chicago, 1991.
B. B. King, Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of B.B. King. New York, 1996.
Richard Kostelanetz, The B. B. King Companion: Five Decades of
Commentary. New York, 1997.
Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began. New York, 1993.
Margaret McKee and Fred Chisenhall, Beale Black & Blue: Life andMusic
on America's Main Street. Baton rouge, 1981.
Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues. New York, 1976.
Giles Oakley, The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues. New York,1997.
Paul Oliver, Blues Fell this Morning: Meaning in the Blues. Cambridge,1990.
Blues Off the Record: Thirty Years of Blues Commentary. New York,1981.
Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records. New York,1984.
Screening the Blues: Aspects of the Blues Tradition. New York, 1989.
The Story of the Blues. Evanston, IL, 1997.
Barry Lee Pearson, Virginia Piedmont Blues: The Lives and Art of Two
Virginia Bluesmen. Philadelphia, 1990
Nathan W. Pierson, Goin' to Kansas City. Urbana, IL, 1987.
Mike Rowe, Chicago Blues: The City and the Music. New York, 1975.
Arnold Shaw, Black Popular Music in America. New York, 1986.
Jon Michael Spencer, Blues and Evil. Knoxville, 1993.
The Rhythms of Black Folk: Race, Religion and Pan-Africanism.
Trenton, NJ, 1995.
Derrick Stewart-Baxter, Ma Rainey and the Classic Blues Singers. New York, 1970.
Sandra B. Tooze, Muddy Waters: The Mojo Man. Toronto, 1997.
Guido Van Rijn, Roosevelt's Blues: African-American Blues and Gospel
Songs on FDR. Oxford, MS, 1997.
Peter Welding and Toby Byron, eds., Bluesland: Portraits of Twelve Major
American Blues Masters. New York, 1991.
Gayle Dean Wardlow, Chasin' That Devil Music: Searching for the Blues. San
Francisco, 1998.

Record, CD and Cassette Guides

Frank J. Hadley, The Grove Press Guide to the Blues on CD. New York, 1993.
Paul Oliver, The Blackwell Guide to Blues Records. New York, 1989.
Robert Santelli, The Best of the Blues: The 101 Essential Albums. New York,1997.
Frank Scott, The Down Home Guide to the Blues. Chicago, 1990.

Literary Reviews

Houston A. Baker, Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A
Vernacular Theory. Chicago, 1984.
Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American
Literary Criticism. New York, 1988.